and smell the coffee..

Coffee is the world’s most popular beverage. Another coffee fact is that depending on your weight and the strength of the coffee, it would probably take between 50 and 200 cups of coffee to kill you. Finland consumes the most coffee per capita (about 9 cups per day per person)! Coffee has many health benefits too, see our health page for more info!

Coffee History Timeline: 850: First discovery of coffee berries by the Ethiopian goat herder Kaldi. 1100: The first coffee is cultivated on the Arabian Peninsula. 1475: The world’s first coffee shop opens in Constantinople. 1600: Coffee enters Europe through the port of Venice. 1607: Coffee is introduced to the New World by Captain John Smith. 1652: The first coffee house opens in England called “penny universities”. 1654: The first coffeehouse opens in Italy. 1672: The opening of the first Parisian café. 1683: The first coffeehouse opens in Vienna. 1690: The Dutch become first to transport & cultivate coffee commercially. 1721: The first coffeehouse opens in Berlin. 1723: Coffee Plants are introduced in the Americas for cultivation. 1727: The Brazilian coffee industry starts from seedlings smuggled out of Paris. 1822: The prototype of the first espresso machine is created in France. 1885: Natural gas/ hot air become the most popular method coffee roasting. 1900: Kaffeeklatsch, afternoon coffee, becomes popular in Germany. 1905: The first commercial espresso machine is manufactured in Italy. 1908: Melitta Bentz makes worlds first drip coffeemaker with blotting paper. 1933: Dr. Ernest Illy develops the first automatic espresso machine. 1938: Nescafé instant coffee invented for Brazilian coffee surplus problem. 1945: Gaggia perfects the espresso machine to produce a thick layer of crema.

1995: Coffee becomes world’s top beverage. A commodity second only to oil. Coffee Plant: The coffee plant is a woody perennial evergreen that belongs to the Rubiaceae family. Two main species of coffee are cultivated today. Coffea arabica known as Arabica coffee accounts for 75-80% of the world’s production. Coffea canephora, known as Robusta coffee, is more robust than the Arabica plants, but produces an inferior tasting beverage with higher caffeine content.

The coffee plant must grow for three or four years before it begins to produce a coffee cherry and the plant can grow as tall as ten meters. Coffee tends to grow best in humid environments that receive lots of rain, but not too much rain. Elevations above 1800 feet produce the world’s best coffee, a deep and rich flavour with an excellent balance of acidity and bitterness as a foundation for regional differences in certain flavour notes.

Africa is known for its fruity, sometimes citrus like flavour, with some sub regional varieties that vary due to the processing, that can bring out distinct blueberry notes. Latin America is generally known for the great acidity - the bright, almost effervescent quality of its coffees. The Asia Pacific region is known for its earthy qualities - woody and loamy without the more complex flavours and aromas of other regions. All of these differences are accounted for by the climates, soils and growing conditions of the countries producing coffee in these major coffee growing areas of the world. There is a belt of coffee that girdles the planet, cantered on the equator, and these major growing regions follow that belt as it circles the planet.